Below are resources for early childhood professionals and those serving the early childhood community.

To Boost Preschool Quality, MA Invests in College Degrees for TeachersEducation officials in Massachusetts recognize that the low pay of preschool and childcare jobs has put higher education out of reach for many early childhood educators. Would-be teachers are hard pressed to take out student loans, knowing that low-paying early childhood jobs will make it difficult or impossible to make the required payments after graduating. (Hechinger Report)

2018 KIDS Summit – Save The Date​! The Kindergarten Individual Development Survey (KIDS) is an observational tool designed to help teachers, administrators, families and policymakers better understand the developmental readiness of children entering kindergarten. KIDS is core to the Illinois State Board of Education’s (ISBE) goal that every child in Illinois deserves to attend a school wherein all kindergarteners are assessed for readiness. Kindergarten teachers statewide began using KIDS in Fall 2017. The statewide implementation followed five years of piloting with select districts. KIDS deepens our collective understanding of the importance of investing in early learning for all students to get a strong start. KIDS focuses on the knowledge, skills, and behaviors across four key domains that most impact long-term student success. The domains are: Approaches to Learning and Self-Regulation; Social and Emotional Development; Language and Literacy Development; and Cognition: Math.

Early Childhood Data Collaborative Survey Points to Greater Need for Data Coordination What is one way states could use the recent fiscal year 2019 federal funding increases for early care and education programs? Improving early childhood data systems. While states collect a lot of information about young children, data collection across early care and education programs is often uncoordinated or nonexistent, which can hinder the quality of programs available to families.